Edmund Gettier
Philosopher & Epistemologist
關於
Edmund Gettier (1927–2021) was an American philosopher whose three-page 1963 paper, 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?', is among the most consequential in modern philosophy. For over two thousand years knowledge had been defined as justified true belief; Gettier produced simple counterexamples in which a belief is true and justified yet, by any intuition, not knowledge — because it is true for the wrong reasons. The 'Gettier problem' launched a vast literature on what must be added to justified true belief. Remarkably, he published almost nothing else — his complete works run to three short items — and spent his career at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
主要貢獻
- Wrote 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?' (1963), refuting the classical definition of knowledge in three pages
- Originated the 'Gettier problem,' reshaping the agenda of modern epistemology
- Showed that justification and truth can coincide by accident, without yielding knowledge
- Exemplified the sharpening of a question as a philosophical contribution in itself
- Taught epistemology and logic at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1967–2001)
